I’m at the Guardian Media Group’s offsite. Not planning to blog it. But I can’t help this: David Muir, CEO of WPP’s The Channel, gives the agency’s ad share projections for the UK. Online is now at 25% (far ahead of the U.S., by the way) and they predict it will surpass TV — and all other media — next year. But he cautioned that 79% of that online advertising goes to search. Google is God.

CORRECTION: I missed a step in the math. Muir says that search takes 79 percent of online advertising and that Google, in turn, takes an estimated 75 percent of that, three-quarters of three-quarters.

Years ago, I told a friend of mine at News Corp. that TV should be putting web cams in the homes, offices, and even cars of experts and sources so they could go on the air anywhere, anytime. One of her TV colleagues pooh-poohed the idea, insisting that this wouldn’t give them “broadcast quality” (is that an oxymoron?).

And, of course, soon you won’t even need Justine’s purse. I met last week with Nic Fulton, who has been leading the mobile journalist project using a stock Nokia phone with software that lets a journalist publish video, audio, photos, and text. That’s not live — yet — but soon will be.

In today’s Times, Kevin Martin argues for a loosening of the rules prohibiting cross-ownership of newspapers and TV stations to help save newspapers from financial doom. But he loosens them only so much, fearful, I’m sure, of unlocking the antimedia rage genie that bit his predecessor, Michael Powell, so badly.

A company that owns a newspaper in one of the 20 largest cities in the country should be permitted to purchase a broadcast TV or radio station in the same market. But a newspaper should be prohibited from buying one of the top four TV stations in its community. In addition, each part of the combined entity would need to maintain its editorial independence.

He doesn’t go nearly far enough. I say the ban should be lifted entirely and that cross-owned companies should be allowed to merge entirely and for more reasons that Martin gives. First, I agree with him that enabling newspaper and TV companies to join together in a market will give them both efficiencies that will help extend the limited life of the print business model; it buys them time and if that means time for development — instead of time to milk the old cow before she keels over — that’s good.

Media consolidation is a boogeyman we don’t need to be afraid of anymore. Clear Channel, the great consolidator, had to go private because the market wouldn’t support it anymore. Tribune Company, the wunderkind of cross-ownership with a paper, TV, radio, online, and a sports franchise in the Chicago market, has been taken over by a builder. Giant Knight Ridder fell into the hands of giant McClatchy, which just took a huge write-off against its plummeting value. Consolidation today is no longer about conquering the world. It is, as I’ve said here often, about huddling together against the cold wind of the internet. Let them huddle, I say, or they’ll die sooner. Martin apparently agrees.

But there’s another reason to allow — no, encourage — cross-ownership: multimedia literacy. Here I am arguing that newspaper people need to learn how to make radio and TV and the internet and that TV people need to learn to tell stories across all media. And so wouldn’t it be good for the journalists in both tribes to merge and learn each others’ ways? Couldn’t (notice I said ‘couldn’t’ not ‘wouldn’t’) that improve the journalism on both sides? Isn’t there a chance that a wisely managed, larger newsroom could waste less resources matching each other on commodity news and go out and report real news?

I’m not so optimistic or foolish to believe that every consolidated, cross-owned, converged newsroom would operate with such strategic wisdom. Some would just use the merger as an excuse to reduce staff so as to squeeze out a last drop of milk. But you can’t regulate and legislate smart management.

Why not give them a chance to invent new ways to gather and serve journalism across all media and all distribution channels? Somebody might do it right and that somebody probably wouldn’t be in a top 20 market — the only ones Martin wants to free up — but in a smaller market. That somebody would show the way for others as a few — too few — newspapers and TV stations are doing for each other now.

I’m surprised that the strike-silenced TV networks didn’t have a plan B to call on all the new talent out there. I’m not suggesting that every YouTube video should become a prime-time show. But surely there’s a show that could be made out of the creativity of the public and in making such a show, a network would open itself up to new talent, whom it could commission to make new TV. And it’d be cool.

ABC made a show out of YouTube videos this summer, but it was more of the gotcha variety.

I’m thinking there could be a show made up of the entertaining videos people are making. Out of the millions of minutes on YouTube, Blip, etc., surely they could find 22 good ones, no? I’m prejudiced, but I’d start with Black20 (in which — full disclosure — I have an investment) and Mary Matthews and Liza Persky on 39 Second Single (with whom I worked on IdolCritic). But there are so many more. Ze Frank could be the emcee. Rocketboom could do the news. Who else would you nominate?

The network that does this finds cheap programming and new talent and tames that wild YouTube thing for its audience. I’m surprised this isn’t already in the can. Silly networks. Do they think TV can be made only their way?